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27 November, 2011

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New Scientist – If the battle to eradicate polio were an action movie, this week would be the part where the good guys have racked up spectacular victories – but look like they may lose anyway. On the spectacular side, polio may be gone in India. Of the four countries where polio remained entrenched, the giant country was expected to be the last to fall. Yet its most recent case was in January this year, whereas by this time last year, it had had 40 cases. The intestinal-borne virus hasn’t even been found in sewage in India… Read article

FIS – Once fish stocks fall below 300 kg per ha, their coral reefs may collapse and lose their productivity. This figure offers an indicator of the “tipping point” or sustainable fishing, a new study claims. Read article

Bloomberg – China’s naval expansion in the Pacific Ocean is poised to accelerate U.S. investment in anti- submarine warfare equipment, according to Ultra Electronics Holdings Plc, the world’s biggest supplier of sonar detectors. The Pentagon and its allies will focus spending on devices able to spot subs even in the noisiest shipping lanes as China’s naval build-up heightens tensions with neighboring nations and underscores the need to secure commercial shipping flows, Ultra Chief Executive Officer Rakesh Sharma said in an interview. Read Article

Khaleej Times – The United Arab Emirates has urged its nationals to leave Syrian territory and to postpone plans to travel to Syria because of the current tensions there, a senior UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated. “Emiratis who are already in Syria are advised to avoid large gatherings of people, exercise caution and leave Syrian territory because of the current circumstances there,” Director of Nationals’ Affairs at the Ministry Ambassador Eissa Abdullah Al-Kalbani said. Read Article

BBC – Many of Europe’s freshwater fish and molluscs are now threatened species, a new EU study shows. The European Commission called for urgent action to preserve the diversity of Europe’s wildlife. Read article

Bloomberg — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s move to expand price controls this week sparked panic purchases by consumers, leading to shortages of everything from coffee to toilet paper. People are buying more than they need to stock their homes and resell the products at a profit in the black market, Food Minister Carlos Osorio said yesterday on state television. The authorities are visiting stores to ensure the availability of regulated products, he said. Read article

BBC – Venezuela has received its first shipment of gold bars, after President Hugo Chavez ordered the repatriation of 85% of the country’s bullion reserves. The gold was unloaded from a plane and taken under heavy guard to the Central Bank in the capital, Caracas. President Chavez has explained the move as an act of sovereignty that will protect Venezuela’s reserves from global economic turbulence. Read article

The Guardian – The teargas used by interior ministry troops in Cairo’s Tahrir Square is supplied by a US company. Demonstrators say cartridges retrieved from the scene are branded with the name and address of Combined Systems Inc (CSI). The firm is located in Jamestown, Pennsylvania. It specialises in supplying what it calls “crowd control devices” to armies and “homeland security agencies” around the world. It also manufactures lethal military equipment. Read article

Daily Mail – A group of scientists is pushing to publish research about how they created a man-made flu virus that could potentially wipe out civilisation. The deadly virus is a genetically tweaked version of the H5N1 bird flu strain, but is far more infectious and could pass easily between millions of people at a time. The research has caused a storm of controversy and divided scientists, with some saying it should never have been carried out. Read article

TheGlobeAndMail – About mid-week, the city began handing out notices that it intended to enforce a bylaw requiring a square in the financial district to be cleared at night. Some protesters fearing sudden eviction had already started gathering their belongings earlier this week and others simply left after the mayor urged them to move out. Sixteen people were detained briefly by Montreal police during a peaceful demonstration. Read article

Metro – Thousands of militant truckers are threatening to bring Britain to a standstill next week in a nationwide protest over fuel prices. The lorry drivers are so angry they are prepared to risk arrest and the loss of their licences by blockading roads, say their leaders. Read article

Telegraph – North Korea has threatened to turn Seoul’s presidential office into a “sea of fire,” one day after South Korea conducted large-scale military drills near a front-line island attacked by North Korea last year. The exercises marked the first anniversary of North Korea’s artillery attack on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong that killed two marines and two civilians. The North’s military warned in a statement on Thursday that “a similar sea of fire” may engulf Seoul’s presidential Blue House if South Korean forces ever fire a single shot into North Korea’s territory. The warning was carried by North Korean state media. Read Article

Independent – Sri Lanka said yesterday that it was conducting its own count of how many civilians were slain at the end of its bloody civil war, to counter claims that tens of thousands were killed and fend off international calls for a war crimes inquiry. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa also acknowledged for the first time that soldiers may have committed “crimes” and promised an investigation. It marked a major shift for a government that had sworn its soldiers were beyond reproach and insisted not a single civilian was killed by its forces in the final stages of the war against Tamil Tiger rebels. A UN report in April said tens of thousands of civilians may have been killed. Read Article

A comprehensive archive of news articles covering new medicines, information on diseases and their casualties, and the science behind the latest cures. To read our Disease and Medicine news archive of 2,896 articles CLICK HERE

Abstract:
In recent decades, there have been a number of debates on climate warming and its driving forces. Based on an extensive literature review, we suggest that (1) climate warming occurs with great uncertainty in the magnitude of the temperature increase; (2) both human activities and natural forces contribute to climate change, but their relative contributions are difficult to quantify; and (3) the dominant role of the increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (including CO2) in the global warming claimed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is questioned by the scientific communities because of large uncertainties in the mechanisms of natural factors and anthropogenic activities and in the sources of the
increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. More efforts should be made in order to clarify these uncertainties. Read Paper

The Telegraph – Criminals who commit offences online and cyber bullies will be banned from the internet as part of the Government’s new cyber security strategy, announced today. It calls for police and courts to make more use of existing “cyber sanctions” to restrict access to the social networks and instant messaging services in cases of hacking, fraud and online bullying. Sex offenders and those convicted of harrassment or anti-social behaviour also face more internet restrictions under the new strategy. Read article

AFP — People who ate canned soup for five days straight saw their urinary levels of the chemical bisphenol A spike 1,200 percent compared to those who ate fresh soup, US researchers said on Tuesday. The randomized study, described as “one of the first to quantify BPA levels in humans after ingestion of canned foods,” was done by Harvard University researchers and appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s November 23 issue. Read article

Nordic Science – If a man is circumcised, he faces an increased risk of experiencing delayed orgasm, and his female partner has an increased risk of not feeling sexually fulfilled. This is the clear-cut conclusion of a new Danish research article, which has received international attention. Read article

AP – Egypt’s military rulers picked a prime minister from ousted leader Hosni Mubarak’s era to head the next government in a move quickly rejected by tens of thousands of protesters, while the United States ratcheted up pressure on the generals to quickly transfer power to a civilian leadership. Read article

France24 – As people left the cemetery after the two protesters’ funeral, a group of people started shouting anti-government slogans. Very quickly, the police moved in, as you can see in the images. According to my sources, the two people who died were shot at by snipers stationed in the big water tower that can be seen in the background of the video. Then a tank arrived and began to try to mow people down. Most people ran out of the way, but in the last three seconds, you can see the tank hit a man. Read article

The Egyptian military has been using a banned chemical agent to deal with hundreds of thousands of protesters, according to several news sources. At least 23 Egyptians have died and more than 1,700 have succumbed to a lethal gas military forces have been using during the past three days in clashes in and around Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The International Business Times reports that demonstrators have been struck with “dangerous levels of CR gas over the past two days of protests” and Australia’s The Age said Wednesday that the canisters are marked “Made in the USA.” Read article

Reuters – Unidentified fighter jets bombed three Islamist militant bases in Somalia on Wednesday, residents and soldiers said, as neighbouring Kenya continued its assault on the rebels. Kenyan troops entered Somalia six weeks ago vowing to wipe out the al Shabaab group, who it accuses of being behind a wave of kidnappings and attacks on tourists in Kenya. Its air force has launched a series of strikes on what it says are rebel targets. Read Article